


Fabulous Monsters

by ellispark



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Apocalypse World with Winchesters in it, Canon-Typical Violence, Friends to Enemies to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Reference to Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:26:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24244243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellispark/pseuds/ellispark
Summary: It’s been a year since Dean last saw Castiel — a year since he was captured and reprogrammed by the angels, trained to be a torturer. When Charlie escapes the angels, she tells him Cas can still be saved.Dean rushes to Cas’s rescue, unsure of what he’ll find. Will Cas be the loyal friend he lost, or the emotionless killer the angels turned him into?
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Castiel
Comments: 19
Kudos: 182
Collections: SPN Dystopia Bang 2020





	Fabulous Monsters

_“’Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!’_   
_‘Well, now that we have seen each other,’ said the unicorn, ‘if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you.’”_   
**_Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass_ **

Charlie returns to camp with blood-streaked hair and bruises on her temples and around her wrists and arms. She’s thinner than she was when Dean last saw her, her wrist bones poking out from under her too-large jacket sleeves. But she’s alive.

They swarm her – Ellen fusses over her, clicking her tongue and saying, “We need to get some food in you;” Bobby asks for a debriefing at 0800; Sam scoops her into a bone crushing hug before Mary shoos everyone away. Dean stands on the outside of the hive of activity, watching as Charlie tries not to flinch away from all their light and hovering touches. Charlie catches his eye over Mary’s shoulder as his mother leads her away to her tent for rest, a protective but unwelcome hand on Charlie’s elbow. Her eyes say _come find me._

He waits ten minutes for the crowd of curious onlookers to dissipate toward the mess tent before he follows the familiar path to Charlie’s tent – a right at the little shack Ellen used to share with Jo, a left before the path veers into the woods where they set up the shooting range, third tent from the washroom. Charlie’s sitting on her cot when he comes in, hair down and limp, staring at her bruised wrists.

“Hey,” Dean says. She looks up. Her eyes are glassy, but she blinks him into focus.

“Hey,” she says back. They stare at each other. He wants to ask _how_ , but he’s not sure he wants to know. Bobby ran all the tests. It’s really her, not a shapeshifter or a shade or a ghoul. That’s all Dean needs to know. He’s lost too much to go ripping teeth out of a gift horse’s mouth.

But Charlie’s always been good at reading him despite his best intentions to the contrary.

“Dean,” she says, and her voice has an urgency, a _life_ he hasn’t heard in it since she lost Cara. “It was Cas. Cas let me go.”

All the angels left when Michael did. They spread their wings and vanished as if they’d never been on Earth at all. If it wasn’t for the devastation they left behind — ruined cities, decimated wildlife, a population composed half of bodies — it might be easy to pretend they never existed. That their war never happened, that the apocalypse was just a story in the Bible.

They left three weeks ago. Charlie’s been walking for over a month.

“They took me to Texas,” she tells Dean, and then Bobby. Texas is where they took every captured rebel leader they didn’t smite on site. “They tortured me for information, locations and names. Then it was like they just forgot about me.”

What she doesn’t tell Bobby, but does tell Dean, is this: “Cas was there. He saved my life.”

Dean knows why she didn’t tell Bobby about Cas. If Bobby finds out Cas is alive and the angels left him behind, Bobby will march to Texas and cut Cas’s wings off himself, then leave him to die in a pool of his own blood.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Dean asks Charlie. There’s a quiver in his lower lip he’s fighting to ignore. He knows why she told him Cas is alive. She’s the only person he ever told about that night in Maine. Not even Sam knows about that.

“He needs help,” Charlie whispers. She’s skittish, and she should be. “They did something to him — broke him. Dean, if could have seen him...It’s like he was short-circuiting. One second he’d be up in my face, angelic wrath and all, then the next he’d be cowering in the corner and begging for my forgiveness. He’s the one who showed me the broken bar over the window. He showed me how to get out.”

“Then they probably killed him before they left.” He tries to keep his voice flat, emotionless. “What use would they have with a busted up angel they can’t even trust?”

“He left with me.” Charlie doesn’t react to Dean’s jerk of surprise. “I had to leave him in an abandoned motel in Lamesa. After they left he seemed...drained. He was too out of it to walk further, and I—” Her voice trails off, and she casts her eyes down, guilty. She wanted to survive more than she wanted to save Cas. Hadn’t Dean made the same decision just a little over a year ago?

Isn’t everything that happened after his fault?

“Do you have an address?” he asks. She nods and reaches into her jacket pocket. Charlie pulls out a scrap of paper, torn on one edge, and presses it into his hand.

There’s a crooked, smiling cactus in one corner, a cowboy hat sitting jauntily on its head. Dean scans the address, printed at the top of what he assumes was a motel notepad.

 ** _The Sleepy Saguaro_  
** **_14752 S Hwy 137_  
** **_Lamesa, TX 79331_ **

A three weeks walk, maybe. More likely to be four, even if he’s in better condition than Charlie and not ducking from angel patrols every other hour. He’ll need a vehicle and an excuse. It’s as he’s working the logistics out in his head that Dean realizes he hasn’t considered just not going and leaving Cas to die, or burn out, or whatever it is angels do. Maybe he’s not even there anymore. Maybe Charlie is wrong, and Cas left with the rest of them. Maybe Dean will drive for days over pockmarked back roads and deal with the hassle of militia checkpoints and arrive in Lamesa to an empty room.

He has to go anyway. Charlie knows it. She watches him, expectant and silent, waiting.

He smoothes over the paper and tucks it in his pocket, next to his gun.

“I need your help with a cover story,” he says.

Bobby isn’t suspicious. He has no reason to be. He’s in the best mood Dean’s ever seen him in, even taking pre-apocalypse Bobby into consideration. The angels are gone, and his people — what’s left of them — are safe. When Dean asks for a vehicle to take so he can check in on the camp in Provo, Bobby just takes a sip of his beer and hands the keys to the Jeep over.

“I might stay there a little while,” Dean says. “Make sure everything is still running smoothly.”

Bobby almost grins. It’s the strangest sight Dean’s ever seen, reminds him of the time he saw his second grade teacher at Wal-Mart when he was eight. He hadn’t known teachers had lives outside of school. He didn’t know Bobby knew how to smile.

“You finally gonna take Lisa up on her offer?”

Dean barely restrains his grimace. The last time he saw Lisa she told him he was reckless, thoughtless, a walking superman complex with danger spinning around him in an orbit. Certainly not a man ready for fatherhood. He never told Bobby, or anyone, why he stopped going up to Provo. Better to let them think it fizzled out rather than let them know it exploded on him.

“Maybe,” he lies, and Bobby buys it. They all buy it — his mom wishes him luck, kisses him on the cheek. Ellen tells him to say hi to Ash for her; Garth asks him to bring back some of Beth’s veal steak. “Tell her I’ll try to come see her real soon,” he adds, blushing, and Dean pretends he’ll pass the message along. It seems like the whole camp is stopping by his tent with notes or supplies or little trading trinkets. He feels guilty collecting their things knowing he’ll eat their food and use Maggie’s warded bullets to barter with the guards at the blockades.

Sam sits on his cot in the corner of their tent watching everyone come in and out, and he doesn’t comment. Dean knows he’s only waiting for a chance to talk to him alone. Sure enough, as soon as the last visitor has trailed off, Sam says, “You’re not going to Provo.”

Dean folds his clothes into thirds, stuffs them in his duffle bag, and waits for Sam to continue.

“What’s going on?” Sam’s wearing his pinched, pissed off face, the kind he brings out when Dean takes the last of the hot water in the communal washroom or forgets to leave his boots in the muddy corner.

Dean stares at the plaid in his hands, looking for an answer in its patterns. All he can come up with is that he needs a better wardrobe now that the end of the world is over.

Sam’s mouth flattens into a line. “This is about whatever happened to Charlie, right? Are you going to Midland? You know if there’s any of them left, that’s where they’ll be.”

“I’m kinda counting on it.”

There’s a pause, then Sam says, “Oh.” It’s careful, free of inflection.

“Yeah.”

“Cas was there?”

Dean zips the bag up, hauls it over his shoulder. He avoids his brother’s eyes.

“Yeah.”

Sam won’t say anything to anyone. He knows how to keep Dean’s secrets. That doesn’t mean he won’t offer up judgment. Dean’s shoulders tense as he waits for the lecture.

It doesn’t come.

“I think,” Sam says in a low voice, too low to be overheard from outside the tent, “the angels brainwashed him.”

Dean eyes start to burn, from relief or guilt or anger or any mixture of messy emotions he doesn’t have time to handle right now.

“You don’t have to make excuses for him—”

“If you didn’t think there was a chance he’s still _Cas_ you wouldn’t be going,” Sam points out. “I’m saying I agree. I’m not—” He sighs, eyes unfocused, like he’s remembering the last time he saw Cas at Stull. How quickly everything went wrong. “I’m not Bobby. I don’t want him dead. I want him safe. And if anyone can get through to him, it’s you.”

Dean doesn’t believe that. He used to think he was special to Cas — his charge, his comrade, his first true friend. His lover. But the memory of Cas’s face, angry and distorted and bloody, douses his faith in their so-called “profound bond.”

“I could go with you,” Sam offers when he doesn’t respond, and Dean tries to pull out a smile for him. It comes out all wrong, broken at the corners.

“Thanks, Sammy,” he says, “but this is something I’ve gotta do alone.”

It takes him three days to drive to Lamesa. Roads aren’t what they used to be, and even with four-wheel drive any journey is slow going. Luckily Dean was spared too much grief at the checkpoints between Utah and Texas. It seems with the angels gone the patrols just don’t give a shit anymore. They waved him through in exchange for three packs of cured beef and an old 12-gauge.

The town of Lamesa, not exactly a bustling metropolis in its heyday, is dead silent. Empty. Judging from the blank storefronts lining the square, Dean guesses it was probably dying before the angels and demons came along to deliver the final blow. The streets aren’t in terrible condition, though. There are the normal issues, unfilled potholes and downed trees, but no makeshift blockades or strips of pavement blown away by landmines. He reaches the far side of town without incident. The motel is still there, its cactus-shaped vacancy sign shuddering in the high West Texas wind. There are no lights on, but that’s to be expected. Most of the U.S. lost electricity the moment Michael touched down. Most of the U.S. never got it back.

Dean drives around behind the motel and parks the jeep under an old awning that probably used to house the manager’s car, out of sight of the road. He takes his time securing the weapons in the hidden wheel-well, carefully selecting what he’ll carry with him — a small revolver loaded with angel-killing bullets and the blade Cas gave him years ago.

He doesn’t want to think about having to use them, but... Sam was right. Cas wasn’t _Cas_ , not the last time he saw him.He tucks the blade under his belt, puts the gun in his coat pocket. Time to face the music.

Dried weeds and gravel crunch under his feet as Dean carefully makes his way around the back end of the motel, counting off room numbers as he passes under pebbled bathroom windows. The idea of breaking down a door in full view of the highway, even with no one in sight, raises the hairs on the back of Dean’s neck, so he’s going to go about this the hard (yet less noticeable) way. When he reaches the sixth window he pulls a flat-sided knife out of his back pocket and picks away at the brown paint covering the edge of the sill, digging until he hits that sweet spot between the window and the wall, right where the paint gives way. It’s a fairly fast process from there — a few digs in the right spot and he’s breaking the thin, rusted latch and pushing the window right open.

There’s no easy way to scramble through the narrow window, so Dean hesitates, hands on the sill. If Cas is injured or out of it, like Charlie said, then it won’t matter how loud Dean is when he drops into the mildew-covered bathtub. But if Cas is still... like he was the last time they met, or if this is a trap, then —

There’s no way around but through, as his mother says.

And he’s not leaving Cas behind. Not this time.

Dean settles for dropping in arms first, barely catching himself on the edge of the tub before his teeth can slam into it. It’s a loud, angry fall, ending in a loud, angry thump. He hesitates, sprawled out in the bottom of the tub, but hears nothing from the other room.

He doesn’t bother to sneak in. He crawls out of the tub, throws the door open and says, “Cas?”

It takes a minute for Dean’s eyes to adjust to the dim light. The blinds at the front of the room are drawn closed, as are the ratty curtains. There are two beds, both unmade, against one wall, and a low-sitting chest of drawers on the other. As he moves farther into the room, he notices the television. It’s toppled over, fallen from the top of the chest of drawers and onto the floor. He walks toward it, and glass crunches under his feet. Dean pulls his gun out.

“Cas?”

He swivels, looking back toward the bathroom door. The kitchenette next to the bathroom, just a corner with a mini-bar fridge and a sink, is covered in blood. Great, wide swaths of it, smeared like someone fell on the ground and then tried to haul themself up by the counter, hands wet with blood.

Dean rushes to the window at the front of the room and yanks the curtains open. He surveys the beds in the light, and he can see that one isn’t simply unmade — it’s a mess, sheets nearly in knots and blood in drips everywhere. The glass on the floor isn’t just from the TV but also a mirror, cracked and hanging at an angle on the wall, like someone was shoved into it.

“Cas!” He yells, spinning as he takes in this tale of horror — a violent, deadly struggle, which seems to have ended with the loser dragged from the kitchen and back out the front door.

Cas isn’t here anymore. There’s no one here.

Dean feels like he’s going to throw up. He puts his hands on his knees, lets his head hang low until the feeling passes. He tries to tell himself Cas is an angel, he doesn’t even really _need_ blood, but looking down puts him face to face with the dark, damp stain on the carpet, and it doesn’t help.

He blinks. Presses his toe into the stain, sees some of the blood seep up out of the carpet. It’s _damp_. It’s fresh.

Dean runs out the door and into the street, and he prays for the first time in a year.

_Cas, I’m coming._

The nice thing about the apocalypse — the only nice thing the apocalypse has ever done for him, really, besides bring him Cas — is that it’s cut the number of working vehicles on the road into far less than half. Dean knows exactly what he’s dealing with from the moment he sees where the blood trail ends at the tire tracks in the gravel parking lot.

The tracks are huge, deep — from something heavy, heavier than the typical off-roads that survived the war. Only marauders, roving bands of lawless, ruthless humans, have trucks big enough to leave those tracks. They’re the type of tracks that are easy to follow, and the marauders are the type of people who aren’t afraid to be tracked. The type of people who aren’t afraid to be tracked because the angels used to protect them.

 _Well,_ Dean thinks grimly _, no one is protecting you now._

_No one is gonna protect you from me._

In every war there are traitors. In humanity’s war with the angels some took the angels’ side. The marauders are the worst of the lot.

They didn’t just run to the angels to be spared a horrible death; they didn’t crack under torture or fall to their knees in deep, religious rhapsody. They wanted the apocalypse. They wanted death and destruction because it benefitted them. They wanted free rein over the wasteland of the world, and they were willing to pay the price for that freedom in pounds of flesh from their fellow men.

Angels can harness souls for power. Dean’s seen them do it. He watched Michael once reach into a man’s chest and pull out a light shining so brightly it nearly blinded him.

Marauders brought the angels those souls in the form of living, breathing people. Dean hates them — as much as hates the angels, maybe even more than he hated the demons. Humans make the worst monsters.

This particular group must know the angels are gone — who wouldn’t know, who didn’t see? — but they’re still not covering their tracks. He follows them outside of town, loses them when there’s no dirt left for their tires to leave behind on the overgrown highway, but picks them up again when he spots an open gate leading into a dead wheat field. There’s a small farmhouse in the middle of the field surrounded by trees that were obviously planted there by the owners then left to die when heaven rained down on Earth. Next to the farmhouse is a barn, and in front of the barn are three trucks jacked up on monstrous off-road tires.

Jackpot.

He drives past, hands clenching at the wheel. It physically hurts not to turn around, but Dean’s alone. He has to be smart about this. He’s got a few guns, an angel blade and a whole lot of guts, but that might not be enough to get Cas back. It will be dark soon, and if he waits until they’re asleep, he can sneak in and free his friend under the cover of night.

 _If there’s anything left of him by then._ Dean shakes his head, shoves the thought down, down, down. Instead he prays.

_I know where you are. I’ve found you, and I’m coming for you. I’m coming for you._

He keeps praying. Dean prays for over an hour, the way he used to back when he first lost Cas and couldn’t sleep for the longing tearing him up inside. He prays with his head down and his eyes closed. Prays like a true believer, which is something he never was until Cas came into his life.

The rest of the angels came first. There were spottings — unconfirmed at first — of beings made of light possessing human form and performing minor miracles all over the globe. Dean didn’t buy it. Demons, yeah. He’d seen those. Fought them. Angels? A fairy tale.

But soon the reports crept their way into the US, and they got harder and harder to ignore. A man in Florida said an angel saved him from drowning, only to then reach inside of him and cause him such excruciating pain he passed out. A woman in Kentucky said an angel appeared to her in a dream and asked to take control of her body. A teenager in Washington, D.C., saw one burn his friend’s eyes out. The friend didn't make it.

Even Sam, who’d believed in angels since they were kids, started to doubt their holiness at that point.

Then Michael touched down, and no one was praising these benevolent warriors of God anymore. The Winchesters gained one more supernatural being to hunt — one that apparently couldn’t be killed.

It looked like the end of the world.

And it was.

He turns the engine off on the road and lets the Jeep roll downhill to the barn, lights out. Dean didn’t want to bring the car this close, but if Cas is as badly injured as the blood at the motel would indicate, Dean can’t risk trying to get him out on foot.

Dean leaves it parked right in front of the barn doors — there are only two places for Cas to be, here or the house, and he knows from personal experience that no one likes to keep a dead man walking next to the rooms where they eat and sleep.

The barn door is opened a crack, but there’s no light coming from within. It’s a good sign in that it means the marauders are probably bedded down in the dilapidated farmhouse for the night. It’s a bad sign in that no one needs to stay awake to guard a corpse.

Could they kill Cas? Dean only knows one way for a human to kill an angel, and he doesn’t doubt these traitors have gotten their hands on an angel blade at some point. He tries to shake the thought from his mind as he shimmies through the cracked door, gun first.

The only light in the room comes from the high open windows, moonlight drifting in beams down to the straw-covered floor. Dean walks cautiously around them, though the open room appears to be empty. The stalls lining the walls are dark and barren, though the faint smell of manure lingers still.

There’s nothing here. Not in the rafters, not in the stalls. Dean’s bracing himself for a home invasion when a glint of light outside one of the stall windows catches his eye.

It flashes and dances in and out of view, changing color mercurially, and it takes him a moment to realize he’s seeing a fire. He freezes in place, eyes caught by the flames.

Dean Winchester isn’t afraid of much. He’s faced down demons and angels alike, survived being thrown into a vampire lair, being mauled by a hellhound. He seeks the things that go bump in the night, drags them into the day and puts bullets in their heads. But he does not fuck with fire; hasn’t since the night Dad died in front of him, swallowed by flames, when Dean was four years old.

And yet —

Didn’t Cas venture into the fire to save his sorry ass? Surely Dean can manage what must only be a large bonfire. He swallows around the lump in his throat, and he holds his gun up again as he slips back through the barn door and into the night.

He sticks to the shadows at the edge of the barn, keeping his footsteps light and soft. He doesn’t hear any voices coming from the direction of the fire, but that doesn’t mean no one is out there. Now that he’s outside, Dean can see enough of the flames to know that it is indeed a bonfire, built in the dried out husk of the farmhouse’s back pasture. Dean stops with his back pressed against the barn, watching the light from the fire dance across the broken corn stalks. It doesn’t quite reach the yard, but if he goes much closer, he’ll be easily visible from the dark house. Dean steels himself and stares at the flames, looking for any shadows, and finds only one.

It takes him a moment to recognize what it is he’s seeing — after all, he’s only seen Cas’s wings three times, once for each time the angel stood between Dean and danger and death. But once it dawns on him, there’s no mistaking them.

Cas’s wings, pitch black, are illuminated from behind by the bonfire. They’ve been spread apart forcibly and tied to two posts driven into the soil. The feathers are torn in places, completely missing in others, and one of the bones at the outer edge of his right wing looks unnaturally bent. Dean bites back a shout at the sight of them, once so beautiful, now mangled.

He can’t see Cas’s face from his hiding spot. The angel’s head is down, chin to his chest. To have his wings manifested, and manifested in such a condition — Dean can only hope he’s alive and unconscious. That would be the best case scenario at this point, and he can’t afford to dwell on the worst. He’s already thinking of the Jeep, parked and waiting out front, and how many steps it will take to get from the barn to the fire and back through the barn to the car, all while dragging Cas behind him.

And the wings — they won’t fit into the Jeep. He’ll need Cas awake, and he’ll need him strong enough to pull them back into the ethereal plane they normally reside in.

“Fuck,” Dean whispers, and, taking one last look around the yard, he dashes toward the fire.

There’s nowhere to hide, so he won’t bother to try. He keeps his head down and his gun drawn, but there’s so movement in the house behind him, no lights coming on or guns being cocked. There’s only him and the fire, and Dean tells himself, _don’t look at it, don’t look at it, look at Cas, only look at Cas._ He can smell burning wood, feel the heat as he draws nearer, running through a line of sigils carved in the dirt. He heads straight for one of the stakes, nearly fumbling the knife he’s pulled out of his pocket as the fire cracks and pops and one end drops into itself a bit, sending a plume of smoke and ashes into the air.

Hell was filled with flames, and the first time Dean saw Cas’s wings, they were backlit by the fire. Just like this. Dean keeps a hold of the knife, and he uses it to saw through the rope holding up the wing in one fell swoop.

The rest of the rope is still tangled around the wing, woven to keep it in place, to keep Cas pinned like a butterfly on a cork board, but Dean doesn’t have time to unravel it now. He rushes past Cas’s mute body, cuts through the rope on the other end, then turns back to Cas.

The angel is slumped in the dirt, collapsing in on himself. Dean kneels in front of him and picks up his face with his hands, holding Cas up by his cheeks. They're bloody, but the wounds on his face are already clotted — healing already. A good sign. Cas’s eyes roll and refuse to focus on him, but he mumbles something unintelligible. He's alive, then, and it’s a victory.

“Cas,” Dean says, quiet but urgent. “I need you to get up. _Now.”_

Those blue eyes dart over Dean’s face before rolling back toward the ground. Dean slaps his friend’s cheek, but Cas doesn’t react.

“Hey,” Dean tries again, “I can’t get you out of here if you don’t put these away.” He reaches a hand out to lightly touch one of Cas’s feathers, and Cas jerks away with a muted cry, an engrained response that makes Dean shiver. As Cas moves away, Dean stumbles forward, and when he reaches out to catch himself his hand disturbs another sigil. “Oh,” he breathes, and to Cas he says, “Hang in there, buddy.”

Dean leaves Cas, scanning the dirt around the fire. It’s covered in Enochian, and although Dean can’t read it in the dim light, he recognizes enough of the symbols to know what it’s for. He sets to work, dragging his feet through the soot and soil, erasing all presence of the carefully-laid markings. As he does so, Cas starts to sway, then sits up, his eyes brightening as his grace flickers behind the irises.

“Dean,” Cas says once Dean’s done stomping on the last sigil, and Dean smiles. Then he remembers the last time Cas said his name, the hatred in it, the way his beloved friend had snarled and sneered at him, looking more animal than human, and his hand goes to the gun he’d tucked into his jeans.

“I—” Cas’s eyes are sad in the light of the fire.

“Put them away,” Dean says. He doesn’t pull the gun out, but he doesn’t take his hand off it, either. “Then we’ll get you out of here. And then…” He pauses, watches Cas’s face for signs of the madness that afflicted him the last time they met. He sees nothing but pain and despair. “Then we can talk.”

Cas shudders as he draws his shoulders together, and his eyes draw tightly closed in a grimace as he reaches out with his grace to pull the wings back in. He told Dean once before that it wasn’t a pleasant feeling to pull part of himself in and out of various planes of existence, and that was when the wings were whole and uninjured. To do it like this — Dean winces to watch as the mangled feathers shift and crack as they retreat into the ether. He sees Cas biting his bottom lip until it bleeds to hold back a cry as they disappear. Cas is still swaying in pain as Dean rushes to his side and lifts him up bodily, nearly carrying him away from the bonfire and toward the darkness of the barn.

They stumble around the backside of the building together, Cas weak and limp, Dean straining to keep him upright. “Just another twenty yards,” he promises. He can’t even see the Jeep for the darkness of the night, but he knows where it is. “Stay with me, okay?”

What a hopeless thing to ask of Cas. What kind of an angel would ever stay with a man? Dean puts his head down and finishes dragging Cas to the car in silence. He’s careful when he opens the door and lifts Cas into the seat, careful as he shuts it again, though the thud as it closes echoes loudly no matter how gentle he is. A light comes on in the farmhouse and Dean gives up any pretense of sneaking out. He runs for his side of the car, and as soon as he’s in, he guns it back up the driveway. The whole farmhouse lights up behind them as they barrel down the dirt road, back toward Lamesa.

“Dean,” Cas tries again, his voice thready and weak.

“Not now.” Dean watches the rearview mirror, waiting for headlights. “We’ll talk when we’re safe, okay?”

“We’re never safe,” Cas murmurs, but he falls silent.

Dean manages to evade the marauders easily enough. They take too long to gather their trucks and follow, and by the time he spots their headlights behind the Jeep, he’s almost in town. It’s easy enough from there to lose them in the side streets. He hides the Jeep in an open garage, pulling the door down to shut himself and Cas inside. Dean takes Cas into the house and deposits him on a mildewed couch. Then he takes point by the window, watching as the marauders roll past, unaware. They could search every abandoned building in town, but Dean doesn’t think Cas is worth that much to them.

“What were they doing to you?” he asks, eyes outside and shotgun across his lamp. He knows Cas isn’t sleeping — angels don’t sleep — no matter how quietly he lays there, soaking in dust bunnies while his grace works to heal his injuries.

After a brief silence, Cas says, “They thought they could sell me to the highest bidder. Now the angels are gone they’ve got to find a new way to make their blood money. The leader believed some of the rebel groups would pay quite handsomely for me.” He pauses and Dean almost turns to look at him, but he forces himself to keep his eyes up front. “Is that why you’ve come for me? To take me to Bobby to answer for my crimes?”

Cas doesn’t sound upset by the idea. If anything, his voice is filled with a knowing sort of resignation, and that makes Dean turn around to face him. He can’t see Cas’s face any better here with only the moonlight to guide him, but he knows the angel well enough to picture the look on his face – the guilt and the grief.

“No,” Dean says sharply. “Fuck. No! Do you really think I’d do that to you?”

Cas turns his head into the couch cushion, and it muffles his voice as he says, “I would deserve it.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I tortured your people, Dean,” Cas points out, and he’s pulled his head up so his voice carries better. “They were captured, and they were brought to me, and I tortured them.”

Dean knows this. Six months after the angels captured Cas, six months after they ripped him from Dean, a group of rebels from the Ogden and Salt Lake camps ran into a garrison of angels while on a joint intelligence mission. Only one returned alive. Maggie had been stuttering and stammering, eyes wild and near out of her mind when she stumbled back home. They’d let her go, just so she could tell them they’d lost. The angels fell upon the Ogden rebels within the hour, and only a dozen or so of them managed to escape by fleeing into the heavily warded woods toward Bobby’s camp.

Dean was with the Ogden rebels finishing up a supply run at the time, and he’s the one who saved the survivors by beckoning them into the woods. He’d seen Cas, blade out and teeth bared, cutting down the humans who weren’t quick enough to flee.

Their eyes met across the camp, and Dean saw Cas’s mouth form his name in a twisted snarl. “ _Dean.”_ And he knew then that Cas was the one to blame for the massacre, but that he was the one to blame for what had become of Cas.

“Tell me something.” Dean inches away from the window, though he’s careful to keep a few feet between him and Cas. “What did they do to you after they caught you at Stull?”

He can hear the springs in the couch squeak in protest as Cas stiffens. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I say it does.”

“Dean, it doesn’t,” Cas insists, and Dean wishes for some light. Wishes he could see his friend’s face.

“So, by that logic,” Dean presses, “the shit I did in Hell matters, too — the torture, the pain I caused, that’s all on me.” He doesn’t say that he still believes that and always will; what’s important is Cas’s stance on the matter.

“No.” Cas’s voice shakes with righteous indignation. “It’s not the same—”

“Did they torture you?” He can’t ask it any way but point plank, and Cas’s head jerks away in a flinch. “Charlie said they had. You told me once what would happen if they caught you, after you defected to us — you told me they’d ‘reset’ you.” Cas doesn’t answer, and Dean scoots closer to him, laying his weapon aside. “You also told me that what I did in Hell wasn’t a product of the blackness of my soul, but instead a product of the darkness I was surrounded by and the pain inflected on me by it. Wouldn’t it work the same way for you?”

“Dean.” He’s missed the way Cas says his name, though he wishes he wouldn't say it so desperately. Not like this. “The things they did to me they’d done before. And I resisted in the past; I stayed true to who I was. Yet when I actually had something to fight for — when I had _you_ and your faith in me — I failed. I gave in, and they tore into me and rearranged my _grace;_ they reprogrammed me and made me into what your people always said I was — a monster.”

“You think I don’t know something about monsters?” Dean asks quietly. “I grew up chasing monsters, Cas — and they weren’t always supernatural, either. Then I saw monsters come down from the skies with promises of Heaven on Earth, and I knew that whatever they had in place of their hearts it was black as a demon’s eyes, because there ain’t no peace like war for things like them.” Closer now, and he can see Cas’s eyes, full of tears. So human. “When Michael came to me in my dreams and told me I was the one who’d end it, if I’d only say yes and be his vessel, I told him to go to Hell. And he sent me there instead. That’s a monster, Cas.”

“He tortured you to bend you to his will,” Cas says, “and I tortured them under his orders.”

“You saved me.” Dean’s close enough to touch Cas now, and he reaches out and lays his hand on Cas’s. It’s trembling. “You came to get me under his orders, but instead of taking me to him you took me home. You hid me. You protected me. Why did you do that, huh? Why did you rescue me when you knew what it could cost you?”

A tear escapes Cas’s eye and rolls down his cheek. Physical pain and mental anguish — that’s a combination Dean understands too well. He rubs his thumb over the back of Cas’s hand as he waits for the angel to answer.

“I saw you in the Pit,” Cas says, careful and slow as he thinks back, “and saw the demon you were becoming.” Dean resists the urge to pull his hand away in shame, knowing it will undercut the point he’s trying to prove. “I saw your soul under the char of the underworld, and it was—” He pauses, searching for the right word. “Glorious. Luminous. I saw beneath the stench of Hell to the man you were, and you were _good_. You were righteous, but not because you were meant for Michael, just because that’s who you are. And I knew what he wanted to do to you was wrong, and I couldn’t stand to hand you to him to be hollowed out and corrupted.”

Dean’s throat feels tight. He swallows, reaches his free hand up to rub at his burning eyes. He never asked Cas _why_ before, because he thought he understood. He thought Cas saved him just because Cas is good, not because he saw good in the wreckage of Dean’s soul.

“They wanted to kill you,” Dean manages to say, and they both know he doesn’t mean the angels. “As soon as Bobby saw your wings, he was ready to shoot.”

Dean remembers the angel pulling him out of his coffin, holding Dean close even as he kicked and lashed out and flying them to the camp within a blink of eye. When all the rebels raised their guns at him, Cas threw out his wings to protect Dean. As soon as the feathers brushed against him, Dean remembered all of it — the stench of decaying souls, the heat of the rack, the bloodied knife in his hand. And Cas reaching for him, raising him from perdition.

“You saved me,” Cas says. “You begged them not to kill me.”

“And you could have left,” Dean says, “but you stayed because you’d decided I wasn’t some monster or a pawn in Heaven’s game or a monkey suit for Michael to wear. And I saved you because we’re the same — you’re not a pawn. And you’re not a monster, Cas. You were put in a shit situation by powers beyond yourself, and you did what you had to do.” He pauses. “Sometimes, what we have to do is bend until we break. I know that better than anyone. But what you did is not who you are. If you apply that logic to me, you’ve got to apply it to yourself, man.”

Cas’s eyes fall closed, and he turns his palm over. Dean laces their fingers together. “You’re really not here to kill me.”

There was time when Dean thought he could, as he stared out at Cas over the bodies of men and women he’d fought beside for years. The Cas he saw in that camp was the stuff of nightmares, unhinged and inhuman. Dean raised his gun, loaded with angel-blade bullets, and pointed it at Cas’s head.

He couldn’t pull the trigger.

“I can’t hurt you,” he confesses, knowing full well how much power he’s giving Cas. The power to break him more than he already has.

Cas had stared at him, too, eyes ablaze and blade raised, poised to be thrown. He had a clean shot, and he hadn’t taken it.

“They brainwashed me,” he confesses finally, hand tightening around Dean’s. “They wanted me to kill you, but when the time came I couldn’t. Their hold on me started to fade. When they left it was gone completely, and all I wanted was to see you.” His eyes open, and they hold Dean’s. “You are a part of me, and I could no sooner cut off my wings than harm you.”

Cas tosses and turns throughout the night, clearly in incredible pain. Dean does what he can to help, which isn’t much. He brought basic supplies in the Jeep — nonperishable food, water, a small first aid kit — but nothing to ease the pain of broken wings. Only Cas's grace can fix that, and he wonders how long that grace will last without the Host to nourish it.

He gets the feeling the marauders weren’t the ones who destroyed Cas’s feathers, though he doesn’t ask. He forces Cas to drink, holds the cold water bottles from the cooler over his sweating face. Cas protests, saying human remedies won’t help an angel, and Dean doesn’t mention Cas looks more human than angelic now. He wishes he had morphine. He wishes he was a witch, as loathe as he is to admit it. They have spells to work against angels; surely they’d be able to come up with something to help heal one.

Cas doesn’t speak much, but he does tell Dean the healing will be slow. He can’t fly, so they’ll have to leave by car. He doesn’t ask Dean where they will go, and Dean has no answer to the unspoken question.

He wants to take Cas home. In the aftermath of the angels, the long-standing rebel camps like Bobby’s are the safest place to be. Partnered loosely with the militias and well-armed against the marauders, the camps are the last semblance of some sort of society. And Cas won’t be welcomed in any of them. Bobby could kill him on sight for what he did to Ogden, and Cas wouldn’t raise a finger to fight back.

Dean could try to take them to another rebel camp — he knows there are a few right here in Texas — but his name is widely known across the U.S. hunter network. Dean Winchester, fated vessel of the archangel Michael, the man who helped defeat Lucifer at Stull. The man who started the end of the apocalypse. If he’s recognized, it’s likely Cas will be, too. People who know about the Winchester family usually know about their “pet angel” as well.

Hitting the road alone is dangerous. Civilians who don’t find their way to refugee or rebel camps are either killed by the marauding bands or by their own lack of survival skills. Dean has plenty of those skills to spare, but he’s no match for a group of twenty armed psychos — or any of the few roving demon hordes that managed to survive the angelic invasion. They’d have to lay low, keep their heads down.

A life of running and hiding forever is not Dean’s style, but he knows he’d choke it down for Cas. Would Cas let him, though? Dean watches the angel twist again, groaning as he searches for a comfortable position to lay in. Cas would want Dean to leave him and go home, and Dean is sure Cas won’t survive alone, especially injured as he is.

He could take Cas to the outskirts of the camp, have Sam and Charlie come meet them. They would protect Cas while Dean talks Bobby down, he’s sure of it. What he’s not sure of is whether Bobby can be talked down. The old man is a stubborn bastard but a good leader, and he would put a bullet or a blade through Cas’s chest if he thought it meant keeping his people safe from a very real threat.

“I should have gone back for you at Stull,” Dean whispers to the back of Cas’s head, kneeling next to him to make sure he’s breathing evenly. “If I’d gone back, none of this shit would have happened.”

He thinks Cas is out of it, meditating or doing whatever it is angels do to heal when their grace is damaged, but a small voice says, “If you’d gone back, Michael would have struck you down again.” Cas rolls over, fixing his blue eyes on Dean. “You pulled back to protect your brother, and I’ve never faulted you for it.”

They had a plan at Stull: the only true plan they’d ever had for facing the archangels. Like Michael, Lucifer appeared out of nowhere. Instead of Dean’s dreams, he haunted Sam’s, and, unlike Michael, his army was made of demons. The Winchesters knew they couldn’t run and hide forever — that much was made clear when Michael caught Dean for the first time and threw him into the Pit. They would have to say yes to being angelic vessels, or they’d have to take a stand. They decided to take a stand.

There's a gateway to Hell in Stull. The plan was to open it with a spell to pull the archangels into the Pit. Sam stood too close, and Lucifer made a grab for his true vessel as he was sucked back into the abyss. Dean didn’t do his part, didn’t stay focused on Michael. He pulled his brother away, cutting off the spell, and Michael, angry at being denied his showdown with his brother, reached out a hand to smite them both.

Cas stepped in between, wings spread wide. The angels took flight, interlocked in a whirl of blades and limbs and wings.

“It was my fault,” Dean says, and his voice breaks. “If I’d stuck to the fucking spell—”

“Sam would be in Hell,” Cas says matter-of-factly, “trapped in the Cage with Lucifer and Michael. And if you’d reached for me as I took on Michael, you would have ended up in the exosphere with us. Then you’d be dead as well.”

Dean gets the knot in his throat undone enough to ask, “Is that where you went?”

“Oh, much further than that. I took him to a black hole.” Cas smiles faintly. “It took him some time to get out of it.” Then he frowns. “But he still caught up to me.” He looks up at Dean and sees his stricken expression. “I didn’t go back to Stull afterwards, Dean. You couldn’t have waited for me. I expended all the grace I could leading him across galaxies, giving you time to run.” He reaches out and lifts Dean’s chin up with his hand. “I’m not proud of much I’ve done in the past year, but I will always be proud of keeping you from him to the last.”

It’s the easiest thing in the world for Dean to lean forward and brush a kiss to Cas’s temple. Cas closes his eyes and sighs like a weight’s been lifted from him. Dean kisses his closed eyelids, the corner of his mouth, his lips. Cas doesn’t react much, but it’s not as if he isn’t responding. One of his hands comes up to rest on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean feels it against the brand Cas left there when he pulled Dean out of Hell.

Dean never thought he would have this back. That night forever ago in Maine, when they tried to trap an archangel for the first time and nearly died, when Dean tried to get Cas to fuck him savagely and Cas was so gentle — Dean thought it would end there. He let it end there, because everyone else thought he was still making promises to Lisa and no one knew how much Cas meant to him. Dean didn’t even want Cas to know how much he meant to him, because love is a weakness. Charlie guessed, and maybe Sam, too, but Dean held back from everyone else. Including himself. He didn’t dwell on it. Then he thought he lost Cas forever, and it felt like dying anyway. Holding back his love didn’t save him any pain at all.

He pulls away, watches Cas’s face. Bright blue eyes stare intensely back at him. “Is this going to be like Maine again?” Cas asks, part trepidation and part resignation. It never occurred to Dean until now how pulling away from Cas hurt both of them, not just him.

“No.” He brushes the hair back from Cas’s face. “One, you’re not up for sex right now. But more importantly, B, I’m not letting go of you in any way ever again. You got me?”

Cas smiles, turning his head to kiss Dean’s cheek. “I got you.”

They roll out after it gets dark. Although Dean made him a bed in the back of the Jeep, piled high with quilts and pillows stolen from the empty house, Cas insists on sitting in the front seat, his hand laced with Dean’s.

They dodge potholes and fallen trees as they pick their way through the abandoned neighborhoods of Lamesa. Back when this all started, Dean would look at empty towns like this and wonder what happened to the people. Did they fall victim to demons or angels? Did they escape to the militia strongholds in the cities or to the rebel outposts in the forests? Now it’s commonplace to him. The world as he knew it is dead, but Cas is alive and back with him in the new one.

He takes the long way out of town to avoid the marauders, backtracking through now-unlabeled county roads to the east before turning northwest and pointing the Jeep toward Utah. There’s no one out here anymore. The farms are dead, crops either withered or overgrown with no in between. They avoid towns when they can, though checkpoints are near unavoidable. But with Cas’s wings hidden in the ethereal plane and Dean’s cap pulled low over his face, they look like nothing more than two weary travelers trying to get back home. Dean supposes that’s all they are now the apocalypse is over.

But why is it over? The question nags at Dean, as it has for the past few weeks. Cas stays silent in the passenger seat, his hand slack in Dean’s as he stares blankly out the window. Dean squeezes it.

“Cas?”

Cas blinks slowly, like a cat waking from a nap. “Yes Dean?”

“Why did Michael leave?”

Cas tilts his head, considering Dean’s profile. “You wouldn’t know, would you? It’s not as if he made an announcement.”  
  
“No.” Dean thinks of the first time the news trickled into camp. No one believed it. Bobby said, “Back to work. Nothing’s changed.” For a while, nothing did. Then former prisoners of war, those used for hard labor rather than soul draining, starting making their way north, swearing all the angels had up and left. Then the local militia captain, Jody Mills, told Bobby the higher ups were saying the war was over. The other side had abandoned their posts. Eventually the president came out of hiding and addressed the nation for the first time in almost four years, announcing over the radio that the last archangel, Michael, had vanished. With him vanished the rest of the angels and the threat they’d lived under for years. “We couldn’t believe it at first.”

Cas rubs the back of Dean’s hand with his fingers. “You ruined all his plans, you know. You and Sam.” Dean shoots him a significant look. “Yes, and me too, I suppose. After Lucifer was sucked back into the Cage, he wasn’t the same.”

Cas looks out the front window, eyes far away. “All you ever saw of Michael was rage. Before all this, he had a righteousness to him. A purpose. We all thought he was our Father’s chosen one. The holiest of holies. He never seemed petty or vindictive — that was Lucifer in all of our stories. But then we came to Earth for the final battle, and he was so close to what he believed to be his destiny that he lost any—” Cas pauses, searching for the right word. “Any _humanity_ he might have had. He believed God wanted him to slaughter Lucifer and bring about a new age at any cost. And we took his glorious battle from him. He was still full of rage, but it was utterly directionless. He could keep destroying the Earth, could torture me and others like me, but it no longer satisfied him. I could see it.”

Dean tightens his hand around Cas’s, not wanting to think of Cas so close to the archangel. His own encounters with Michael are nothing but a blur of fear and pain. _"I am your destiny,"_ the archangel told Dean once, and it was Cas who'd promised Michael would never touch him again after Hell. He kept that promise by sacrificing himself to his brother's wrath.

“He had no purpose anymore," Cas continues. "He was lost. And he was homesick. I think in the end, realizing our father would never come back, he only wanted to go home. They all wanted to go home.”

Dean swallows around the dry lump in his throat. “What about you? Do you want to go home?” He thinks of Heaven. He knows so little about it beyond what Cas has told him — endless light and endless praise, the comfort of a thousand familiar, beloved voices singing in tune. Home to Dean is a brother and a mother, a tent in the forest, a gun in his hands. They’re different creatures, he and Cas.

“Dean,” Cas says, and he sounds surprised, “I am home.”

Dean knows the woods surrounding Bobby’s camp like he knows the back of his hand. The stream where they fetch their water, the outcropping of boulders where his mother likes to lay out her clothes to dry, the thicket where he and Sam hide while hunting game. He knows that coming from the southeast the road closest to the camp stops at a downed oak, and passing the oak is considered crossing onto camp land.

Dean pulls the Jeep to the side of the road by the oak and waits. He knows there’s a lookout somewhere in these trees. He knows word will get back to the camp soon enough that he’s returned and he didn’t return alone.

Cas stares at Dean, silent and trusting in a way Dean almost can’t stand. He hasn’t earned Cas’s trust. He failed him at Stull and in Maine by not reaching out, and now he’s brought Cas into the belly of the beast. Dean takes his revolver out, holds it. He’s not even sure he can protect Cas from these people, but he has to try. There’s nowhere else they can go. To try to make it alone, just the two of them, is asking for death in a world like this.

Ten minutes pass from the time they pull over to the time the lookout (it’s Garth today) steps out of the trees. Garth beckons to Dean, but all he does is roll the driver’s side window down a few inches.

“Dean.” Garth stays a good ten yards away, shouting to be heard. He’s eyeing Cas warily. “Bobby's gonna want you to bring him into camp.”

For the first time, Dean sees Cas’s fear in the way he stiffens in his seat. “No,” Dean shouts back. “You radio him and tell him I’m not getting surrounded by a bunch of trigger-happy morons! He can come out here, then we’ll talk.”

Garth’s shoulders fall in a full-body sigh. He walks back toward the trees, radio in hand, passing along the message.

“Bobby wants me dead,” Cas says. It’s a statement, not a question. “For what I did in Ogden.”

“Well, we can’t always get what we want,” Dean says gruffly.

“You can’t ruin your standing with the hunters over me.” Cas grips Dean’s free hand in his.

“I’m hoping to use my standing with Bobby to save your ass,” Dean says. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll try plan B.”

“What’s plan B?” The skepticism is clear in Cas’s voice.

Dean shrugs. “Run, I guess.”

Cas grunts in a disapproval, but at least he doesn’t try to argue. Dean stays alert, watching the trees for any sign of movement.

Sam and Charlie are the first to break out of the woods a good twenty minutes later, and if Dean believed in God he’d be thanking the old man right now. Cooler heads are going to be an absolute necessity in this conversation, and Sam and Charlie are on his side. He’s sure of it.

“I’m getting out.” Dean turns to Cas, points a finger in his face. “You stay here.”

He exits the Jeep, gun still in hand but pointed at the ground. Charlie jogs the last few yards to him, and Dean sweeps her up in a hug. As he puts her down, Charlie smiles over his shoulder. “You found him.”

Dean turns, and yes, Cas has left the Jeep. _Idiot._ He's walking oddly, a bit stiff. Dean can only imagine his wings are still sore and aching. Sam reaches them first, wrapping a surprised Cas in a bear hug. Cas’s eyes are open wide over Sam’s shoulder, and it takes a few seconds for him to react, patting Sam awkwardly on the back.

“Glad to see you looking like you, Cas.” Sam smiles down at him, and Dean is absurdly grateful for his brother — his forgiveness and grace and understanding — because Cas actually smiles back. Then he turns to Charlie.

“I owe you my life,” he tells her, and she shrugs him off, standing on her toes to kiss him on the forehead.

“We’re even,” she says.

As much as Dean wishes he could keep this warm feeling of family and kinship, he knows it’s short-lived. There are footsteps in the woods, and they can only mean one thing.

Bobby emerges from the treeline, shotgun in hand. He’s trailed by Mary, her own gun slung over her shoulder. Dean looks between his surrogate father and his mother, Bobby’s hard mouth and Mary’s pitying eyes, and he steps between them and Cas.

“Dean,” Bobby says, and Dean waits for him to say something like _step back son, get out of my way, this thing is a monster and it will die for its crimes_. Dean tenses, every inch of his body screaming _fight or flight_ and this is fight.

But then Bobby says, “I don’t know why you brought him here. I don’t want to know. But he can’t stay.” Dean begins to protest, and Bobby holds up a hand. 

“You know I can’t let him stay.” Bobby’s eyes flick briefly to Cas, and they aren’t as cold as Dean suspected they'd be. “Charlie has told me enough that I won’t shoot on sight, but I ain’t about to make that promise for everyone else in my camp. They’ve lost too much to ask it of them.”

“I just—” Dean feels his throat closing up. Cas puts a hand on his shoulder. “I just didn’t know where else to go.”

Mary steps away from Bobby, and for the first time Dean sees the bag in her hand — and Sam and Charlie have bags, too, that they’d dropped at the edge of the woods.

“You’re coming with us,” Mary says simply. “Both of you. We’re building a new camp, further in the mountains.” She looks at Cas. “A camp that will welcome a different type of rebel.”

Dean takes a shuddering breath, eyes on his mother's face. This is her home. She belongs here, and he can't begrudge her that. Can't let her walk away from it. He doesn't want any of them to give up the shelter they've guarded so closely for years just for him. “Mom, Sam, you don’t—”

“I used to tell you when you were little that angels were watching over you,” Mary says, and she looks directly at Cas. “One was. It’s the least I can do for him.”

Cas seems at a loss for words. Dean reaches back, grabs his hand. Sam, Mary and Charlie start to load their duffles into the Jeep, Sam stopping to put his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “More are gonna come, you'll see,” he tells Dean. “People who support you and Cas.”

Dean can only nod in response, mute. When he made the decision to come here, he never pictured this. Best case scenario he assumed he and Cas would be running back into the woods alone, a target on Cas's back as wide as his wings. Instead Bobby is giving them an out. He's giving Dean the best gift he can — a chance at a life with the people he loves most. Even the one who isn't a person at all.

Dean turns back to Bobby.

"Thank you," he manages, and he means so much more than those two words. _Thank you for not making me fight you for this. Thank you for trusting me enough to let us go. Thank you for everything._

The old man nods, just once, and walks away. Back into the woods, back into Dean’s old life. A life he chose to give up for Cas. Cas, who’s staring at him with mournful eyes.

“Dean, I can go alone,” he tries to protest. They truly are a matched set — every doubt Dean feels about dragging his friends and family down with him reflected in Cas's eyes. Dean silences him with a quick kiss in front of his family. In front of his whole world.

“No,” he says. “Like I said — I ain’t leaving here without you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to nickel for her gorgeous artwork. You can find her art [here](https://nickelkeep.tumblr.com/post/618557193158115328/my-art-for-ellis-parks-spn-dystopia-bang-fic) on Tumblr. She also writes great fics! Check her out!
> 
> My Tumblr is [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ellis-park). You can reblog a post for our work [here](https://spndystopiabang.tumblr.com/post/618576906297720832/fabulous-monsters). Check out the other stories for this bang!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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